March 02, 2014

A Nice Little Place on the North Side (Wrigley Field at 100)

Issue No. 294 of Your Weekly Staff Meetingfeatures a baseball book to whet your appetite for Opening Night (March 30) and Opening Day (March 31) here in the U.S. But it’s more than a baseball book—as you would expect from the pen and wit of political commentator and Pulitzer Prize-winning author George Will. Plus, this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

Let’s Read Two!

Chicago Cubs baseball fans, many still hunkered down during This Longest Winter Ever, know that spring training started last week at the new Cubs Park in Mesa, Ariz. On cue, the Cubs lost their first two games (including a 15-3 walloping by the Angels), but divine intervention—rain—postponed last Saturday’s double-header. True fans also know the time-honored Cubs call to worship, “Let’s Play Two,” intoned by Hall of Fame second baseman Ernie Banks (1953-1971). My cry: “Let’s Read Two.” I’ll explain.

The measure of a good book, perhaps a great book, is when I finish the last page, I’m sad to see it end.

This Wrigley Field tribute, A Nice Little Place on the North Side, lovingly crafted by George Will, is a gem—but I still had five days of vacation left last month. I needed more! Surely Will could craft a second book for us hopeless Cub fans? Misery loves company.

Another measure of a great book—I can read numerous paragraphs out loud to my wife, and she’s not annoyed. And no wonder—she converted me into the religion that is Chicago Cubs baseball misery in 1968, a year before we married.

“Is 1984 in the book?” Joanne asked, sadly.

I assured her that the heartbreak of 1984 was duly noted—plus other dates and fates: Leon Durham, Steve Bartman, 100 years of Wrigley Field, and dozens and dozens of other Cubs moments to inspire depression. Seventh inning stretch broadcaster Harry Carey (would-have-been 100 on March 1) is also mentioned.

So why read this? Because the sadness is frequently erased with Will’s dry wit, intelligent analysis, and sidebar wisdom and humor: --“For most teams, 0 for 30 is called a calamity. For the Cubs it is called April.” --“What does a female bear taking birth control have in common with the World Series? No Cubs.”

Will quotes sportscaster Red Barber who said, “Baseball is dull only to dull minds.”Exactly. That’s why Cubs fans clearly have higher I.Q.s. We find meaning and solace in the nuanced explanation of win/loss records.

But this is far more than a tribute to Wrigley Field (100 years old in April), host to more than 140 million fans since 1913. Will’s wisdom shines in hundreds of one-liners: --For immigrants, “Learning to talk baseball was part of the catechism of the civic religion.” --“Chicago was just the place for a man with Cowperwood’s high ratio of energy to scruples.” --Contrasting the “Wurlitzer jukebox” strobe lights and noise that is the NBA experience with the sanctity of the Wrigley Field organist, Will’s axiom is perfect, “At a baseball park, the loudest noise should be supplied by the spectators.”

George Will was born in Champaign, Ill., on May 4, 1941. No surprise, the Cubs lost a game to the Brooklyn Dodgers that day. He laments, “Had I been paying attention then, this book might not have been written. But one thing led to another, as things have a way of doing, and in 1948, when I was still not as discerning as one should be when making life-shaping decisions, I became a Cubs fan. The Catholic Church thinks seven-year-olds have reached an age of reasoning. The church might want to rethink that.”

The religious references in Will’s epistle (he also wrote the New York Times best-seller Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball) could well be the genesis for a “theology of baseball” book or a seeker church sermon series in any Chicago suburb.

“Baseball fans, an otherwise sensible and agreeable cohort, are given to gushing. It is a grating attribute.Many people in this modern age are relentless in sharing their feelings about this and that, and baseball fans can be especially so. They have a high-octane sentimentality about everything from playing catch with Dad to baseball’s resemblance to heaven—how do they know?—or Pericles’s Athens, or the Federal Reserve Board. Is there anything that baseball has not been said to resemble? Or to be a metaphor for? And the gushing is never worse than when Cub fans get going about Wrigley Field.”

Fans of baseball trivia will be delighted. Will writes that Albert Goodwill Spalding (“who did not always live up to his middle name”), launched the first professional baseball league in Chicago.

“In 1876, Chicago’s White Stockings, the mighty genesis of the Cubs, won the first National League pennant. Never one to let grass grow under his feet, Spalding retired as a player and began selling sporting goods. ‘One of his less successful ideas,’ [sportswriter Peter] Golenbock notes, ‘was that there be a different-colored uniform for each position. It was a brilliant suggestion for a man selling uniforms.’ That was not all Spalding sold. He became the official publisher of various official baseball guides including the National League Guide. It contained all the official rules of baseball, one of which was that all league games had to use Spalding baseballs.”

You’ll find a year’s worth of water cooler one-liners: “…in 1916, the Cubs became the first team to adopt the policy of allowing fans to keep balls batted into the stands.”

Part baseball, part history and part civics lesson, this Wrigley Field treatise gives Will license to venture down incredibly interesting side paths:

“In the 1920s, when Chicago’s population grew 25 percent, two-thirds of the city’s residents had been born abroad or were the children of parents who had been. For this polyglot city with so many newcomers, baseball—rooting for the home team in your new hometown—was part of the Americanization process. Learning to talk baseball was part of the catechism of the civic religion. In Chicago, the language of baseball could be learned by listening to the radio.”

And then this:--“Perhaps Wrigley Field should be decorated with a large warning [on the home plate gates] akin to those that appear on packages of, and advertisements for, cigarettes: ‘The Surgeon General has determined that this is a gateway to neurological difficulties.’”

That’s from the book, Your Brain on Cubs. Will declares, according to one of the book’s contributors, Jordan Grafman, a senior investigator at the National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke, that Cubs fans are better decision-makers!

“Yes, rooting for the Cubs is a minority taste. How could it be otherwise? It is, after all, a lifelong tutorial in deferred gratification. But Grafman says, ‘there is some evidence that being in the majority (everyone loves a winner) reduces reflective thinking.’ Rooting for a steady, consistent loser makes one thoughtful. Or perhaps neurotic. Which, on Chicago’s North Side, may be a distinction without a difference. ‘The scientific literature,’ Grafman writes, ‘suggests that fans of losing teams turn out to be better decision-makers and deal better with divergent thought, as opposed to the unreflective fans of winning teams.’”

There’s something here for everyman: pastors, professors, pitchmen, policy-makers and perfectionists. If your company, organization, or church will be celebrating a 25-year, 50-year or 100-year anniversary—take a page from George Will’s masterfully written history. Maybe focus on something other than the founder or your big breakthrough—and entertain your readers, guests, clients or donors with a counter-intuitive theme (not the players, the field). Especially if your win/loss record is nothing to write home about.

Like the ubiquitous signs on opening day at Wrigley Field, “Wait ‘Til Next Year,” I hope there’s a sequel.

To order from Amazon, click on the link here for A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred, by George F. Will.Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:1) Do you agree—are Chicago Cubs fans (and fans of other losing teams) better decision-makers? Why? 2) Think ahead to our next big company anniversary. Brainstorm some unique ways to honor the past without gushing, gloating or being ingratiating!

In my cycle through the 20 management buckets, this issue features Chapter 7, The People Bucket, and a reminder about the four social styles: Drivers, Analyticals, Amiables and Expressives.

Tracom Group’s website on social styles features a Social Style Tip of the Day. Here’s a tip on how to leave a voicemail for a driving style person:

“Driving Style people like to use their time efficiently, so make your voicemail brief and to the point.Provide only the key information that is necessary, and don’t bother with specific details unless it is absolutely necessary. Tell the person what your goals are, what you would like the next steps to be, and any timeframes. If feasible, provide options and let the person make a decision. You don’t need to be personable, so don’t be too concerned about politeness or leaving personal comments in addition to your main message.” (Copyright TRACOM Group 2010)

Visit TRACOM Group for the daily social style tip of the day, plus downloadable “Social Style Graphics” (tip sheets) on the four styles. For recommended books on the four styles, visit the People Bucket.